Remarkable Markers 5

In 1823, John Howard Payne, an American playwright and actor, penned the memorable lyrics to a song entitled “Home! Sweet Home!” The last line is “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” The same sentiment concludes the classic 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. The concept of home as a symbol of family, with all that the word family implies of love and security, is so compelling as to have figured prominently in literature over the ages. The symbolism of the house as a home is expressed in stone in Urbana, Ohio’s Oak Dale Cemetery.

Ramsey Family Marker in Oak Dale Cemetery

In Urbana, Ohio, and Author Eleanor Y. Stewart

Admiring the House with Its Intricate Details

Including the Outlines of the Bricks

There, a marker is carved to represent the Ramsey family’s house on College Street, not far from Urbana University. The architecture blends Classical, Romanesque, and Queen Anne details. Retired farmer and former landlord William R. Ramsey (1847–1926) and spouse Ella M. Ramsey (1863–1922) must have loved the house. Neither was from Urbana originally. William was born in Cadiz, Ohio, and Ella was from Belmont County, Ohio. The home on College Street must have represented the culmination of their aspirations.

Ramsey Home in Urbana, Ohio

William is named as having a shared interest in a patent for a vehicle wheel (U.S. Patent 782,001). Wheels were much on the minds of residents. Urbana hosted an enduring carriage builder, originally Warren & Gaumer and later E. B. Gaumer & Sons. After the death of William Warren in 1890, the firm passed to co-founder Edward B. Gaumer. Wheels symbolize movement, transitions, and change.

But a house symbolizes stability. The engraving on the Ramsey cemetery marker confirms that every brick remains in place, unchanged, resisting the vicissitudes of fleeting fortune.

The symbolic house is joyful in the midst of the more somber monuments. One of my first thoughts on seeing the marker was of the family happily conversing in the kitchen with aromatic bread in the oven. Other ideas of family rapidly crowded into my thinking: entertaining in the parlor, celebrating rites of passage such as graduations and weddings, and dreaming about bright futures for children and grandchildren.

The marker is unusual, but the wonder is that more families have not thought of the same way of commemorating their generational bonds. The stone is perfectly suited to its function.

Remarkable Markers 4

A grave marker featuring gracefully sculpted bundles of wheat is a favorite of taphophiles, or tombstone tourists, visiting Oak Dale Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio. Honoring John and Mary Glenn, the sculpture is amazingly detailed, with the stalks cut in different lengths by the scythe. The wheat establishes a visual reference to an explanation given in the New Testament of the Bible; here is the allusion in its entirety:

“ … that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 15:37-58; Published by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press)

Detailed Sculpture of Wheat Bundles

In Oak Dale Cemetery, Urbana, Ohio

The harvesting of wheat has generated many important metaphors. In the 1300s in England, death began to be depicted as a skeleton carrying a scythe and wearing a hood. In the mid-1800s, the figure was called the Grim Reaper.

But sheaves, or bundles, of wheat have also represented eternal life. In 1874, Knowles Shaw (1834–1878) from Butler County, Ohio, wrote the well-known Protestant hymn “Bringing in the Sheaves,” for which he wrote both lyrics and music but which soon was sung to a different melody. Shaw based his lyrics on Psalm 126:6, which reads “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”

Wheat has also inspired hundreds of country fairs that commemorate vintage farming equipment. 

In my book entitled The Harvest Story: Recollections of Old-Time Threshermen, I quoted LeRoy Blaker, who told how big public shows of old-time farming equipment originated:

There were several groups of threshermen having demonstrations of grain threshing about the time of World War Two. 

Mr. Perry Hayden, a Quaker miller of Tecumseh, Michigan, … planted a cubic inch of wheat containing 360 kernels in the fall of 1940. The next July 1941, the wheat was carefully harvested …

… every kernel [was] saved … . After Mr. Hayden gave his tithe or one-tenth to his Quaker church, he had the remaining forty-five cubic inches planted on September 26, 1941.  …

This second crop was cut with cradles on July 4th, 1942 … . It yielded seventy pounds of wheat … . This was 1.16 bushels of wheat from the original cubic inch in two years or 2,448.6 cubic inches or 881,499 kernels from the original 360 kernels.

On the following Sunday, ten percent or seven pounds were taken to the Quaker church as the tithe.

This sixty-three pounds of wheat was planted … in early October 1942. Early in 1943, Henry Ford heard about Mr. Hayden’s wheat-tithing project and sent some of his antique threshing equipment from Greenfield Village to thresh this 1943 crop.  …

… I attended the wheat harvesting at Tecumseh in July 1943 and the big threshing with lots of Henry Ford’s antique threshing equipment … on July 22nd 1944 …

From those interesting demonstrations, I was inspired to have the first Thresher’s Reunion gathering on my farm on July 30, 1945.

The National Threshers Association has continually hosted threshing reunions ever since.

Remarkable Markers 3

In Oak Dale Cemetery in Urbana, Ohio, stands a splendid monument to Simon Kenton (1755–1836). In 1777, Kenton saved the life of his friend Daniel Boone. Kenton served as a scout for Europeans and was captured by Shawnee during the year 1778. Kenton served as a scout for George Rogers Clark during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and with “Mad” Anthony Wayne during the Northwest Indian War (1793–1794). As a Brigadier General, Kenton reprised his rôle as scout—and led a militia group—during the Battle of the Thames in 1813.

Statue of Simon Kenton in Urbana, Ohio

In 1997, donations paid for a life-size statue replicating a smaller one by famous Urbana sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward (1830–1910). The sculpture stands atop a stone plinth, or base, erected in 1884.

Sculpture by John Quincy Adams Ward

Commemorating the Sculptor

Elsewhere in Oak Dale Cemetery

The monument is well worth a visit, as imposing and somber as it is. While Eleanor Y. Stewart and I looked at the statue on a weekday morning in the summer, additional visitors arrived.

Page 39 of the History of Allen County, Ohio (Chicago: Richmond & Arnold, 1906) says, “In the forests of Ohio Kenton had confronted Indians, bears, wolves and panthers. On the south face of the monument is carved, life-size, the head of an Indian chief … ; on the west face is the head of a bear, as life-like as stone can be, and appearing as if the head had just been thrust through the face of stone; on the north side is the head of a wolf similarly carved; and on the east side is the head of a panther. The design is by J. Q. A. Ward, the celebrated sculptor, now of New York, but a native of Urbana. His grandfather originally owned the land on which Urbana is built, and for many years the elder Ward and Kenton were intimate friends.”

Bear on Simon Kenton Monument

I will vouch for the lifelike qualities of the heads thrusting forward from the sides of the grand base. It was a little difficult for me to photograph the faces because they engaged me in what could be described as confrontations.

Panther

Native American

Wolf

I leave it to qualified historians to sort out the complicated issues separating the real Simon Kenton from the legendary one. While I studied the Kenton monument, I admired the work of J. Q. A. Ward, whose statues capture life in ways that I, as an illustrator, can admire but cannot produce. Ward was an exceptional artist!

Wandering away from the solemn shadow of the monument, Eleanor Y. Stewart and I found a bur oak nearby. We collected several acorns to present to the squirrels in Eleanor’s yard back home. Finding the choicest acorns in the sunny grass took our minds off the menacing heads protruding from the Kenton monument. By the time we had hauled our harvest to the car, we had resumed our cheerful, chattering selves.